The Log Book–(or paper bag album) A Girls Camp Craft

Have you ever written an entire post to lose the whole thing just before hitting the publish button? Yea…that’s me tonight (I was using LiveWriter instead of Blogger). Kind of takes the wind out of my sails, but I will try and be as witty and informative as I was the first time. (No promises, though…it’s past my bedtime!)

Here is the final craft I have to show you from Girls Camp and then we can move on to more party planning, and lots more home decorating lately.

Every ship has a log book, so that is what we called our Navy-themed camp journal/scrapbook craft that the girls assembled during a craft rotation. It served as a military ID, passport, journal, storage for handouts/camp schedule/camp info, etc.

It was very cost effective, since the book is made from three brown paper sacks. (*Note: This project was inspired by a mini scrapbook album, my friend Melissa showed me, so it could easily be adapted to that. You might consider white bags or another color for an album. We were going for vintage/rustic and not too cutesy, so brown was perfect!)

You take 3 paper bags, lay them flat and fold them in half. Decide on the orientation of the bags, so that you can use the open ended sides of the bags as pockets. I designated this pocket as the location for handouts, and made labels to serve as a tab for the handouts. (* In a mini-album, this could be a place for a pull-out card). Open to the center bag and punch holes on the top and bottom along the center fold line. (Hope that doesn’t bring any strange google searchers). We threaded twine (some found at Target Dollar Spot, a harder twine found at Dollar Tree) through the holes and tied it on the outside/spine of the book.

I predesigned all of the inserts and had them printed, cut, and sorted, before camp to try and minimize chaos during the rotation. It was still pretty chaotic to give so many instructions to so many girls at a time, but we managed. I had journaling pages about specific things, and places to fill in some of the details about camp. I was pretty pleased with the passport page and military ID, and how I mimicked the feel of the real things. Our camp photographer to photos of the girls and printed them small to fit perfectly on their IDs.

When the glueing chaos was done, we had the girls come up and we helped them hammer in these brass grommets, bought at the hardware store. I think they were less expensive than scrapbook stores, and leant a more industrial feel to the project. And it allowed the girls to get out any aggression they may have been harboring. When they had the basic elements in place, I had scrapbook paper scraps, stickers, and other items (like that star that used to be on a foil garland from Hobby Lobby) that they could use to decorate and personalize their albums. They attached a pen to a cord, which tied to the twine, so they could always have something to write with for journaling, etc.

This project was one of the more time-consuming to prepare, but again, it was functional, and hopefully now serves as a special keepsake for the girls of their time at camp.

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Comments

Oh, I like being thought of as insanely cool! It's totally true.I love this idea. I've heard of it, but never actually seen it. It is super cute. I'm going to file that away for when dh needs to do something with the cub scouts.